1. Shorthand
Everyone exists in shorthand. If I asked your closest friends to describe you, I’m sure they’d settle on a couple traits that they saw as definitional. For a normal person, shorthand might be: Jerry has a great sense of humor and loves the Mets. Or, Sally is forgetful in a charming way and is devoted to her kids.
When you read the book compiled by Jeffrey Epstein’s friends for his fiftieth birthday, they have a clear shorthand understanding of the man:
- Jeffrey is super-rich.
- He likes having sex with very young girls.
Those are the two themes that show up over and over again. Let me give you some examples. Here is a drawing in the book from one of his friends, celebrating his life’s progress from 30-year-old man with ratty jeans handing young girls balloons and lollipops to the owner of the Lolita Express being serviced by young women on a tropical island.
In this entry an anonymous Epstein friend reminisces about the time Jeffrey sold a “fully depreciated” girl to their mutual friend Donald Trump for $22,500.
You decide what “fully depreciated” means.
Also included in the book is a tribute from an unidentified woman who says that “Before Jeffrey, I was a 22 year old divorcee working as a hostess in a hotel” but “after Jeffrey” she went on to live a glamorous life. She lists various exotic locales she visited because of Epstein and then names a dozen famous people she met because of him, including Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, the Sultan of Brunei, Kevin Spacey, and Michael Jackson. Oh, and Donald Trump.
In hindsight, that list seems suggestive of something other than celebrity….